Mnemon
| Mnemon | ||||||||||
| Player: @teokanthalus | ||||||||||
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| "I'm not a demon, please stop asking." | ||||||||||
| Biographical Data | ||||||||||
| Real Name: | Wilbur Lightfoot | |||||||||
| Known Aliases: | Bill/Will (Civilian), The Blot (Hero) | |||||||||
| Gender: | Male | |||||||||
| Species: | Human | |||||||||
| Ethnicity: | American (Black/Chippewa) | |||||||||
| Place of Birth: | Missoula, Montana | |||||||||
| Base of Operations: | Millenium City | |||||||||
| Relatives: | Dad (Frank Lightfoot), Mother (Maria Gutierrez), Father (Plateau / Abraham) | |||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||
| Age: | 26 (April 27, 1992) | |||||||||
| Height: | 6'6" | |||||||||
| Weight: | ??? lbs | |||||||||
| Eyes: | Dark, with tiny pupils, pupil color can change on a whim. | |||||||||
| Hair: | Black, large fro-hawk that's made up of tiny, curled tenebrous tendrils, with beady little eyes that match Bill's own eye-color. | |||||||||
| Complexion: | Confidential | |||||||||
| Physical Build: | Athletic; lean | |||||||||
| Physical Features: | His shadow sometimes contradicts his own movements, or acts out in moments when he chooses to hold his tongue. | |||||||||
| Status | ||||||||||
| Fame: |
Local | |||||||||
| Alignment: |
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| Identity: | Secret | |||||||||
| Years Active: | 2006-Present | |||||||||
| Citizenship: | US | |||||||||
| Occupation: | Warden of Dreams | |||||||||
| Education: | Difficult to estimate by conventional standards; see Mnemokinesis. | |||||||||
| Marital Status: | N/A | |||||||||
| Known Powers and Abilities | ||||||||||
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| Telepathy |
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| MaekadaBoxSlim created by @Maekada | |||||||||
Powers, Skills, and Attributes
Spatial Manipulation
Mnemon has access to (and a large amount of control over) a realm he refers to as The Never, a place tied to the shadows of the physical world, mystic realms of the quaternion, and the strange planes beyond the heavens and hells. In the cosmological scale of things, The Never is located just outside and below the fringes of the Brialic realms, the Upper Planes, with threads connecting it to Netzach. Though the Never is a Netzach realm, it currently seems to lack a ruler or dimension lord of some sort in full. Mnemon acts more as a custodian and caretaker than a true ruler of the realm, or has not yet realized the scope of what he has at his command.
Applications:
- Shadow-Porting: Bill can move through darkness, entering one shadow and emerging from another with nigh-instant speed. He can extend his senses into The Never as well as his own being, allowing him to scry over incredibly vast distances. When he sheds his skin to become shadow-bodied, he can also use himself as a gateway to The Never, making him somewhat difficult to contend with.
- Nevermore: Bill can transport items into and out of the Never harmlessly. People are trickier, as The Never is home to his hive of starving creatures, and there's no breathable air there as of yet, for those who travel there in physical entirety. Bill's ability to turn shadows into portals to and from the Never also allow him to, in combination with darkening rooms and areas, shunt whole spaces into the demiplane, though this can have disastrous effects on fragile structures if he happens to close the portals off.
- Essence of Never: The cosmic power that ties Bill to the Never can be harnessed and wielded by Bill, wreathing him in extradimensional energies. This energy sheath of cosmic non-space can help reduce the damage of magical attacks, and empowers his own physical and psychic attacks with a potency he himself has yet to understand the breadth of.
- Neverending Hunger: Bill's palate of consumable energies grows. That which he pulls into the Never (or the Never pulls into him) is food, now. Where he once subsisted off of psychic energy, dreams, feelings, and memories, he now has a thirst for raw willpower (Ego score), but can, in addition, sublimate cosmic energies, and mana. This has earned him a breadth of caution from the agents of D.E.M.O.N., as well as some disdain from people in magical circles.
Umbrakinesis
Mnemon can manipulate and generate shadows and darkness. Because it is a form of kinesis (psionic, and also, a stricter form of telekinesis), the bulk of these shadowy shapes get their mass as a form of telekinetic construct.
Applications:
- Darkness Mimicry: Mnemon is a living shadow, capable of existing and maneuvering between being a two-dimensional silhouette on a surface, or a three-dimensional shape. Because Mnemon can exert control over darkness, and that's exactly what his physiology has become, it allows him to afford some unusual shapeshifting. Naturally, as a two or three dimensional shadow, he's rather difficult to harm; in the first instance, this is for obvious reasons as a 2-D shadow is little more than a projection, and in the second instance, because he's essentially an amorphous blob limited largely by his imagination. In either form, he gives off no lifesigns, seems to lack vital organs, and can be difficult to detect, able to fit himself easily into any other shadow. He can also travel through any shadows present at baffling speed, though this is more akin to swift teleportation rather than raw inertia - this makes him no less difficult to pin down, and gives him numerous angles of attack.
- Darkness Constructs: Mnemon can form tangible objects and creatures out of darkness or shadows, or simply make existing shadows solid to create sudden obstacles. While Mnemon's own shadow form is incredibly malleable, inanimate constructs Mnemon makes generally have the tensile strength, sturdiness, and density of whatever's being mimicked (to a point). A rope made out of shadow would bend and support several people if tied off right, and a table and chairs could easily seat a few people for dinner in a pinch, or smash over someone's head. He can cause shadows to animate, acting at his behest (though these minions take a twisted bent and quickly become outright alien and nightmarish).
- Shadowplay: Mnemon can manipulate the presence of light in an area; as long as there are shadows, he can stretch them out, and even snuff out light. His capacity for spreading the lightless void has grown over the years, to where he can blanket a large building, or create shadowed pathways to sneak along. He can cause already present shadows to contort into whatever shapes he has in mind, or even scatter them to rob someone else of the cover of darkness.
Mnemopathy
By touching a target, making direct eye contact, or being in physical contact with their shadow (connected shadows using Shadowplay and Darkness Adaptation count), Mnemon can alter, view, or transfer and share memories, to start. While Mnemon is not a full-grade telepath, it allows Mnemon to be an absolute wildcard in certain situations because most importantly; it is something that can be internalized. It is a very specific sub-discipline of Telepathy.
Applications:
- Adoptive Muscle Memory: Mnemon only needs to be taught something once. Or read something once. Or watch a youtube video once. And once he's seen it, it's in there. He can even learn certain physical skills (martial arts, acrobatic maneuvers) just by watching someone else use them and replicate them flawlessly. As long as he trains these observed skills regularly, he'll be able to call on them in a pinch and string them together as the situation dictates. His capability in any particular 'practiced but borrowed' skill will only ever be as good as the person he observed fighting, unless he surpasses it on his own. He can also 'autopilot' certain practiced skills (like a workout regimen) as a form of meditation. This ability obviously gives Mnemon a huge advantage in hand-to-hand combat, and what many mistake as him binging on the entertainment industry's exploitation of superhumans is visual training.
- Enhanced Memory (Panmnesia): Mnemon can remember and recall everything that he has ever experienced, encountered or learned in his lifetime, faster than a thought. He needs only to read, hear, smell, taste, touch, or see something once and he will never forget it. He mostly turns towards absorbing information about blue-collar careers (electrician, plumber) and how-to videos for all sorts of things on Youtube (with a fondness for how-to's on costumes and cosplay stuff.) Mnemon also remembers any scent, taste, touch, and sound-based information he'd be in hearing range of or subject to while asleep.
- Knowledge Projection: Mnemon can share his own knowledge with others, whether it be a practiced skill, a muffin recipe, or a show he watched last night, as if they experienced it themselves. He can also borrow someone else's skill and share that with others as well. Skills Mnemon already knows and does regularly train in, can be shared for hours, though it does require occasional focus to maintain it, moreso if he's sharing with more than one person.
- Psychometry: A recently acquired talent in Mnemon's psychic toolkit is the power to read impressions off of objects. Objects that have not been handled with any particularly noteworthy memories or emotions associated with them simply provide nothing of worth, but even mere scraps of sentiment or extended use will provide glimpses of memories left behind.
- Thief of Days: Mnemon can use Knowledge Projection aggressively. This method is a bit of a bruteforce psychic attack, and people resilient to psychic powers will be less affected by it. This power largely depends on the target; how talented they are, and how ingrained the stolen skills and memories associated with it are. Making a shaolin warrior forget a life of training so he can't make a fist is much harder than making an average schmo forget where they left their keys, or that a thug with a pistol needs to reload his gun. This only usually ever lasts several seconds when done as a kneejerk response (especially if the criteria of the skill erasure is complicated), though if Mnemon is given enough time and consistent physical contact with a target, he could rob them of a talent for much longer.
- Memory Restoration: Mnemon can, over an extended period of time, give therapy to people suffering from certain kinds of memory loss. He can also help someone remember someone remember an event more accurately, though the person is still limited by what they experienced. He hasn't yet developed this talent enough to completely unwind severe conditions like retrograde amnesia, but it's not entirely ruled out that something as miraculous as this is beyond his grasp.
- Mnemonic Suffering: Mnemon can go a step further than robbing someone of a memory in terms of psychic attack - he can force particularly unpleasant memories on people, forcing them, by all five senses, to relive any particularly unpleasant event experienced from Mnemon's point of view in his life, or any other ugly or painful memories he has stored away. Yes, one of them is getting kicked in the nuts. No, he didn't go out and get kicked in the nuts for the purposes of weaponizing this, but it's one of the many moments when Bill's been life's punching bag (sometimes literally) and one more way he can weaponize his own suffering and trauma on the wicked. He can overload the mind with several memories forced upon a victim at once, effectively knocking them unconscious from sensory overload and system shock. The more time he has to work with the person, the more complex these memory traps can become.
- Mnemonic Vampirism: Perhaps the most distressing aspect of his powers, Mnemon can devour memories permanently as fuel for his psychic furnace. These are particularly nourishing, and even a few consumed moments are enough to put him back on his feet and in fit fighting shape; and the more treasured a memory, the more potent it is. Naturally, Bill's use of this is highly reluctant, but situations present themselves now and then that suggest it's a viable course of action.
Emotion Manipulation
- Empathic Sensitivity: Mnemon can study a person to gauge the strength and nature of their emotions (including insight into what caused their current mood), but can also instinctively pick up on strong, sudden empathic disturbances, and awkwardly receives and interprets this sensory information through his other five senses (being able to taste or smell anger, etc). Familiar mental templates (close friends, family, etc) trigger with greater sensitivity, as do the negative empathic similarities and ties between groups (like toxic workplace hierarchies and grudges). He used to be limited to only being able to view negative emotions and signs of mental trauma or derangements, but recent events have expanded his perceptions to become a more capable empath; though it comes at the cost of interpreting a world with a wide-peering third eye that's nearly impossible to shut. As a result, it takes some focus for him to see the real, physical world as it is; one foot deeply entrenched in the swirling synesthesia of the nearby astral otherwise. He can also see and hear spirits and ghosts that normally go unnoticed by normal eyes.
- Emotional Vampirism: Bill can harvest any nearby ambient emotion (positive or negative), or directly tap into stronger sources from people or creatures. These stolen emotions could be the sense of dread when searching a spooky location, the rage of an unruly mob, or the joy of an optimist. While it doesn't completely siphon the negative emotion away in a large area (though with focus, could), it can certainly shift the dynamic of a situation. Mnemon can more directly devour the intense negative feelings of living beings (or anything with strong emotions), completely deflating someone's negative feelings in a fight to make them feel lethargic, or someone's horror during a traumatic event to calm them down. This power is almost always constantly internalized on Bill; it has benefits, as it keeps his creatures in check and somewhat fed, but also makes him generally blasé and uninspired due to most of his own feelings routinely being digested by himself and the horde.
When storing an abundance of harvested emotional energy, Bill is capable of even greater feats of superhuman strength, speed, and endurance; and can burn this excess energy to enhance his other psychic powers. Bill's empathic vampirism has recently expanded to incorporate being able to harvest the raw willpower of others, and psychic/psionic energy, which will likely make him unpopular with other psychics.
- Emotional Aura: Bill can subtly radiate or cause another person to radiate a particular negative vibe rather than absorb it into himself; this is usually easier if there's already a strong emotional presence to reverberate off of. While he can focus this into a more intense, closer-range field (aura of fear or confusion) to effect more immediate emotional responses, his normal application is often gradual, organically shifted to suit the personalities he's already studied.
- Empathic Blast: Mnemon can fire blasts of raw psychic energy, typically from his hands; these attacks manifest in the form of gray, bland beams; they are only semisolid (density and push of water from a fire hydrant), and incapable of causing lasting physical harm on their own. They do, however, infuse targets with an overwhelming sense of a negative emotion or sensation; usually lethargy, pain, or dread.
Empathic Constructs
Empathic Constructs (The Hive Mind) - The main source of Bill's empathic prowess lies in the entities representing Bill's emotions; his various traumas and triumphs have subconsciously taken on alien shapes like nightmarish metaphors that can emerge to attack his enemies, or help perform basic services and tasks; they also act as extra brains, and assist greatly in his heightened reaction time and reflexes. It is of worthy note that Bill himself casts no shadow, but he almost always seems to be casting one. They're never far, and they don't always show up one at a time. Sometimes, when Bill has been pushed to breaking points, his emotional surrogates pilot him. They're aware enough to know not to get him in too much trouble.
He has at times referred to the creatures as 'The Zoo', or his 'Critters', 'little monsters', and more recently, 'brain eels' because it's honestly less complicated to explain that way. When Mnemon uses his Shadowplay powers to create animated constructs, members of the hive will attempt to possess them and warp them even further. Though this tends to be their only method of manifesting physically, they have no troubles teeming within, a woeful welcoming party for anything infectious, or mentally invasive.
Psychic Defenses
While Mnemon isn't your typical broad-spectrum telekinetic or telepath, he still has a very strong mind. Mnemon's dedication to meditation techniques, control over his own memories, and a great deal of internal self-control and morally upright values he adheres to, have led to him developing great defenses against mental attacks, as well as the hive-mind of creatures living within, and the incredibly hostile mental environment those creatures have made. As a result, Mnemon is fairly resistant to most forms of mind control (psychic, magic, or otherwise) and emotion control, including things like: sleep/exhaustion inducement, dream manipulation, fear or rage inducement, having his own memories and knowledge manipulated by outside sources, having his mind read, and madness inducement.
Other Boons:
Mental Hypermetabolism (Enhanced Reflexes) - While Mnemon can't run at speedster levels, he can think at them. A combination of years of filing away every single thing he's ever experienced, or witnessed from the memories of others, allows him and the hive-mind to process and comprehend and respond to new or constantly-shifting information from multiple sources, in real time. Muscle-memory reflexes are recollected and put to use at much quicker speeds, allowing him to react with superhuman swiftness to attacks and threats from things that otherwise would move much faster than him. It also gives him the ability to obsessively monitor whatever hectic situation he's in (for example; keeping track of whom has what firearm in a shootout, and how many bullets each shooter has fired).
Somnipathy - Bill can enter people's dreamscapes while they sleep, fight off nightmares, and alter the dreamscape of the mind he's in. His Somnipathy developed as a result of learning how to channel the nightmares of people to create fear constructs, but has been utilized lately to provide dream therapy (even though sometimes that therapy involves the consumption of a nightmare). He can use his other psychic disciplines readily on someone whose dreams he's present in. It also allows him to grant himself (or others) a period of lucid dreaming.
Darkness Adaptation - Mnemon can see perfectly in low-light, darkness, and an absence of light (even with his eyes closed). Mnemon's senses also extend through shadows; as long as he's standing in a shadow, and it connects to other shadows, and so on, he can see, speak, smell, and hear through them. By twisting shadows to suit the situation, Mnemon can eavesdrop on criminals from a somewhat safe distance by being in the right place at the right time, and this also makes him very difficult to sneak up on.
Defensive Bypass - Bill's shunning of touch is for good reason. When establishing physical contact for a few seconds, his psychic powers (mnemopathy, emotion manipulation) can be transmitted through the nervous system invasively, through several shadowy setae that emerge from his skin; nanoscopic bristles that can penetrate skin and cloth, until they make contact and tie into nerves, for direct pathing to the brain. This allows Bill to overcome conventional psychic blockers (like implants), as he is not emitting the psychic wavelengths normally used by psychics to tamper with minds. Whenever Bill feels threatened or otherwise distressed, and physical contact is made, the setae work their way into the 'aggressor' less gently, and far quicker.
Aura of Crawling Chaos - What was once considered a cursed and problematic thing for Bill has developed into a talent he can activate or deactivate at will. This aura makes technological observation (scanners, cameras, audio recordings) go completely amok and haywire. While cyborgs experience visual glitches, proper robots malfunction with hilarious, if disastrous consequence if he stays in their line of sight for too long. Similarly, this aura affects those who attempt to glean information from Bill's aura with superhuman/supernatural/paranormal senses, causing a great deal of psychic damage, and inducing mania, as the special sight acts as a bridge for Bill's many creatures to attack and empathically project through.
Weaknesses & Limitations
- Large, bright lights like searchlights, spotlights, and halogen floodlights can knock Mnemon's inanimate constructs to become sessile, and his animate ones will barely be able to hold a vague shape at all. Powers that emit great amounts of light can effectively destroy his shadow constructs.
- Psychic defenses and strong wills will obviously provide defense against his Mnemopathy and Emotion Manipulation.
- Magic attacks and certain energy forms (fire and plasma especially) will destabilize his physical form.
Skills
Weary Traveler - Bill has, in his astral travels, has surpassed the challenges of the Veil of the Temple in Tiphereth. He may pass freely throughout the Outer and Upper Astral Realms, though he currently seems to lack what he calls his "compass". Blessed is he with wisdom and willpower, but lacking in certain experience when it comes to travelling the Infinite Astral Seas. (Very) Diversified Tradesman - Thanks to his Adoptive Muscle Memory and Panmnesis, Mnemon's ability to retain massive amounts of information allow him to train efficiently, and sponge up knowledge. While Mnemon has not completed certification in most of these courses, he's read enough manuals and textbooks, and watched hours of instructional videos to become a tour de force as a plumber, electrician, carpenter, machinist, locksmith, and light and heavy duty mechanic. He's watched enough Food Network to have a library's worth of recipes, and could probably do well at Jeopardy! thanks to a swath of trivia. He knows how to do taxes, and has recently turned towards whatever law textbooks he can get his hands on.
Somehow, A Film Editor - Mnemon did go to college and while his Masters degree is in Electrical Engineering, his quiet passion was in the filler courses he took; at first in film studies, but this traveled the road of special effects, costume design, and post-production.
Martial Artist - Mnemon is trained in Muay Thai, Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Fifty-Two Blocks, Pencak Silat, Krav Maga, and many other prominent forms of martial arts. While he has training in other martial arts, those memories and skills come from his Mnemokinesis. However, because of his inherent Panmnesis and Adoptive Muscle Memory applications, he's a very quick study under mundane training, and can master most of the techniques of a martial art in a very short time compared to others.
Advanced Training - Several of Mnemon's allies took a vested interest in his potential career as a superhero. Ranger Ron especially pulled a few strings and called in some favors to arrange for him to be educated in: proper procedures for arrest and evidence gathering, close-quarters-combat, negotiation and de-escalation, espionage and stealth training, firearms use, SERE, reconnaissance technology use and sabotage, first aid, wilderness survival (desert, forest, jungle, arctic), infiltrative skydiving / HALO, and how to commandeer (see: hotwire) and pilot several modes of transportation. This is apart from him being sent abroad to learn under a few strict martial arts masters, and of special note, his Muay Thai training came from a lady with water for hair, who called herself Phra Mae Thorani; and has only recently discovered that she may very well have been an incarnation of some higher power, and not just a mutant.
Attributes and Personality Quirks
Awkward - Mnemon is often a bit awkward to behold, even for other metahumans who are used to crawling chaos. This tends to manifest in the form of 'tells', the more grossed out people are by his nightmarish hair or the wriggling creatures that slither beneath his skin, the more likely these things are to occur. It's a mild form of empathic shapeshifting that's usually only cured by absorbing the disgust of those nearby as sustenance, or by assuaging their dismay at his unusual presence.
Self-Conscious - While Mnemon is used to ribs about his appearance, he's a bit more sensitive about his powers, which tend to get wildly misinterpreted by outside forces. Rudely. And like his awkwardness with his telepathy-lite tricks, his shadowplay tends to have him viewed skeptically as a hero at the best of times, and at the worst, some of the stuff he manifests is frightening to bystanders, even when meaning extremely well.
A Pretty Okay Guy - Mnemon's normally not super-fond of violence, though lately he's been sending a much more prominent message to the thugs and cutthroats of North Detroit. He'll still usually try to talk a situation out first, but he knows he's growing frustrated with the way of the world. He's less reluctant to use his powers, any of them, than he used to be; preferring to take down his opponents with whatever puts them out of the fight as quickly as possible. Criminals found to be somewhat irredeemable are likely to spend the majority of their sentence in the prison infirmary before they ever see the inside of a cell.
Gear and Equipment
Gear
Weapons - Mnemon carries a pistol (H&K MK 23), but usually uses nonlethal ammo (rubberized or beanbag rounds), and packs a Ka-Bar BKR7-BRK combat knife in his boot. Otherwise, he may fashion shadows into replicas of melee weapons, as long as they have non-moving parts, and doesn't feel the need to pack extra implements of pain.
Armor - Mnemon has a concealed light kevlar-graphene blended layer in the torso portion of his bodysuit, with flexible trauma plates also located along the back of the vest over the spine and kidneys, and in inner-sewn pockets on the thighs of the legs. (He also wears athletic support, for you sneaky jerks with the low blows.) There is also light impact padding sewn between the layers of his mask (around the face/forehead, the back of the skull, and the back of the neck), and the elbows, knees, and shins of his bodysuit, providing effective protection from a bad hit or two from conventional-strength arms. His jacket also has seatbelt fabric sewn in between the layers; kevlar on a budget, but well-stitched and layered. His usual outfit color palette ranges from an off-white, to light grays, with dark grey and black accents. The logo on the chest of his bodysuit is a dark eclipse surrounded by a thin white halo of light that doesn't entirely encompass the eclipse, forming a sliver of a crescent.
Gadgets - Mnemon typically uses a personal, jailbroken cellphone with a top-notch camera in it; as well as a body camera, not unlike what police are outfitted with. Beyond that, he doesn't really rely on gadgets to do his work, though he has taken to tinkering, and concealed a flip-down visor under the brim of his ballcap, and has a HUD that works in line with the bodycam and his phone to relay basic information (temperature, time, cardinal direction, google maps, contacts) and coordinate with a couple of other programs (facial and voice analysis and recognition, gait fingerprint analysis).
Relationships
Friends/Allies
- The Montana Mighties: A state-sponsored super-team consisting of a small group of well-respected state heroes dedicated to Montana's protection. They only really come together in dire times, when one of the bigger threats (like The Prospector) proves more than one or two of them can handle; though sometimes their individual misadventures have them cross paths with one another. They are:
- The Duster: A gunslinging hero from his heydays in Montana (And leader of the Montana Mighty), Mnemon (under the name Midnight Oil) was paired with The Duster as a sidekick. Duster is one of the main driving forces in reinforcing Mnemon's drive to do the right thing and be morally upstanding. Little is known of him by the public, and while he thrives on mystery, has been described as having Action Hero powers, or, The Rule of Cool, and is, naturally, an expert gunslinger. In truth, he is a person possessed by a magical artifact from The Even Wilder West.
- Maize / Lady Sweetcorn: A Lakota woman with the power to fly, as well as control and generate plants. While she puts on a very cheerful face for the local news cameras and social media, when face to face and rubbed the wrong way, Maize will cut you. She has secondary social media accounts under her real identity (Nat (Nahela) Sainte-Cloud) acting as a way to voice her concerns over further cultural erasure and loss of native rights without compromising her polished and proper alter-ego's reputation. Though she is resentful of her 'hero' name, provided by the state sponsorship program as funding for her efforts, finding it generic and stereotypical, she's thus far kept quiet; tempting as it is to take off the mask, or work independently. She is the older sister of:
- Tumbleweed: The gentler counterpart to Maize, Tumbleweed is a paunchy, jovial prankster, and regularly keeps in touch with Mnemon. This happy-go-lucky frequent stoner has the power to generate strong winds, and can also travel by tucking up into a ball and hyper-rolling at blinding speeds. While in motion, Tumbleweed is both hard to hit, and even harder to hurt, capable of rebounding off surfaces repeatedly at high speeds without causing himself damage.
- Plateau: Another of the mighty who keeps in touch with Mnemon, especially as they know each other's identities. Plateau, aka Abraham Wright, owns a construction company, and served in the USMC with Mnemon's father. While The Duster is technically older due to being a strange artifact, Abe is the eldest member of the group, and also the gruffest and most serious. With the power to manipulate and become earth, he's also considered the most powerful. Abe often seems stressed, and Mnemon knows this is not because of his job or heroic activities, but because the man has four daughters to look after of his own accord, since the death of his wife. Two are teenagers. May he have mercy on the criminals he crosses that don't immediately surrender, because like hell is someone making him late for Cassie's soccer practice.
- Doctor Ulysses Hoss: A quadruple-doctorate super-genius stuck in the body of a horse during an unfortunate accident (the likes of which Hoss speaks of no detail, to anyone), he now has the brains of a high-end gadgeteer, and the powers of a horse. Unfortunately, he also has all the weaknesses of a horse, and even though he can speak (often usually with curmudgeonly disapproval), has no opposable thumbs. He'd often have Mnemon assist him with projects, as Mnemon only ever needed to read or be instructed on something once.
- Ranger Ron: Too-uncannily resembling an incredibly fit Teddy Roosevelt, this mighty-moustached super soldier was part of a non-replicatable process due to a unique health condition prior to the experiment that, trillion-to-one odds, slowed his aging, heightened his senses, gave him great wisdom, and made him physically robust. Boasting traits not unlike the folks on Silverline, Ronald has since scaled back from a career with the military as a survivalist trainer to help care for the national parks all around Montana. He has a very helpful habit of happening across people that are lost, or otherwise woefully underprepared for a trek in the woods or mountains.
- The Saturday Night Fright Poker Crew: A rotating group of cryptid faces that Bill's good friends with, whom he mainly met through his misadventures in Sunday Pond, Maine. As part of his obligations to the town, Bill entertains some of the local denizens sequestered here as a kind of witness protection program to keep them safe from monster-hunters. Occasionally, the gang gets up to some kind of shenanigan, whether it's ousting unwanted nosy bodies in Sunday Pond, or solving mysteries in the nearby towns to shake things up a little (with Bill supervising them, of course). They are:
- Mothman: Though he'll insist that he's a mothman if pressed on whether he's the mothman, a mothman he remains, all the same. True to description, Mothman is a looming 8'9" figure swathed in feathers and fuzz colored a nearly lightless black, with giant red eyes the size of dinner plates. A staple at the table, he is the group doomsayer - a pessimist who has somewhat lost his knack for predicting disaster accurately, as people have long since grown indifferent to tragedy. He still has enough foresight to know when he has a bad hand, but nobody's called him on it yet.
- Skunk Ape:
- Chupacabra:
- Puddlefoot:
- Paul Bunyan the 3rd:
- Johnny Appleseed:
- Jersey Devil:
- Bloody Mary:
Family of Note:
- Preface: Bill is no longer in direct contact with his mother, or his dad (mother's husband). He took drastic steps to protect them during a moment when his Aura of Arcane was in flux (people used to have trouble remembering who he was), and removed all traces of himself from their lives: This erasure of himself wasn't just a mnemopathic memory bleaching - he removed all traces of evidence that he existed from his former home, and even went as far as scrubbing birth records from the hospital he was born at, and snipping old memories of himself from friends of the family, and most adjacent family members. Claire (The Jezabelle) is currently Bill's only relative to know he exists as a whole, and she guards that secret in exchange for him keeping quiet about her criminal career.
- James Lightfoot (Dad): Bill's dad, somewhat strict in Bill's youth, though now more relaxed. He is currently employed with the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms), but previously held a fair career within the FBI, in the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB). At one point, James harbored anti-superhuman sentiment for a good deal of his life, but his perspective was jarred when the unthinkable happened, and his own son developed strange powers, and he later discovered that one of his best friends from the Corps (Abe/Plateau) is one as well. James will always be against the idea of his son being a hero, but ultimately resigned to the fact that this is how he's best helping the world. James pulled a great many favors to have Bill properly trained with great discretion in things that a normal teenager normally wouldn't dare partake in, to ensure he was prepared for what the criminal world's really like beyond the misleading allure found in campy comic books. He still strongly dislikes other metahumans - with a great deal of disdain towards Plateau, especially.
- Henry Lightfoot (Uncle): James' older brother, a religious man, had always treated Bill kindly, both before and after his awakening. Henry was someone Bill could go to for advice on just about anything. A retired Marine (due to an injury), Henry seemed like a fabulous role model for Bill to look up to, but unfortunately, Adramalech, The Smiling Jack, a devil of Pride, came to prey on Henry and his small congregation of churchgoers. Poisoning Henry's mind by forcing him to relive the traumatic incidents Henry had buried during the Gulf War, he eventually corrupted him and turned him into one of his soldiers, pitting him against Bill. Though Henry eventually broke free of the corruptive influence of Smiling Jack and stopped himself from killing Bill, the weight of it all broke him. Henry remains committed to an institution, broken and unwhole, with Smiling Jack keeping just enough of a sliver of Henry's soul to prevent Bill from fully fixing his mental trauma.
- Carla Gutierres-Lightfoot (Mother): As stern as James is, it can be said that Carla is even sterner; though often lives out-of-state working in Maryland, for the FBI, in the Violent Crimes Against Children program. Carla was a bit of a helicopter mom for a great deal of Bill's life, and it's only in his more recent hard times, recovering from severe injuries, that he reconnected with her. She quietly embraced her son's career path, if only to irritate James a little now and then.
- It is of note that as time has passed, and Bill's contact with his parents has waned, that his Absentminded Aura has pushed their memories of Bill from the fore of their minds, perhaps even altogether abolishing the very existence of him. However, with Bill's absence in memory, so too has his father's animosity for Plateau waned.
- Plateau (Father): See Plateau's entry in the Montana Mighties. There was a long-unspoken-of one-night stand between Carla and Plateau, though the emphasis on a single night couldn't be made more crystal clear. Carla would meet James a couple of days later during a seminar, and they hit it off quickly enough that when a pregnancy was announced, nobody was any the wiser until Bill was born. This revelation to Bill is recent, but he's processed it well and kept it to himself, rather than cause his biological father any stress.
Enemies
Montage, an evil super-scientist who uses unusual wavelengths in media (film and music, typically) to stress-test audiences in an attempt to unlock unusual talent. This is usually accomplished through his broadcasting devices by subjecting large groups of people to sound or visual-based psychotropic, surreal, and often terrifying stressors that can actually cause people with latent or dormant metahuman potential to erupt. Montage also possesses a form of powerful gaze, capable of hypnotism, or, worse; inducing sanity-shredding visions of raw madness. While his costume and early career pitched him as a campy moustache-twirler interested in petty crime, a pair of bullying heroes gave him a sound beating after humiliating him repeatedly, and when he came back, he still had the outfit, but his talents had taken a very menacing turn, and Montage no longer pulls punches. Some of his latest exploits have turned people permanently mad, or whipped entire crowds up into trampling frenzies or bloodthirsty mobs. Montage is not only responsible for Mnemon, but the transformation and indoctrination of his two best childhood friends, Wyatt Daniels, and Jessica Wynne, into Grip and Chromakey, two of his henchfolk. Montage is considered a threat that warrants superhuman response, as the collateral damage and lethality of his methods can be severe.
Chromakey, one of the three young people whose latent abilities were awakened by the Roxy Theatre Incident that also empowered Mnemon. She appears to be loyal to Montage. Chromakey can sense that which a person fears most, and then cause it to manifest, giving the psychic illusion quasi-reality. She is also a limited photokinetic; capable of camouflaging, but more concerningly, Chromakey can use deflected light as a shield against other light-users, and can redirect light-based attacks ruthlessly. It has long since been assumed that Chromakey is Jessica Wynne, who went missing the day things got weird at The Roxy. While her master has a great hatred for Mnemon, some of their encounters have been (somewhat pointlessly) flirtatious on her part, and every time she's bested him, she's spared him, suggesting that Montage may not have absolute control over her; however, she does seem to enjoy their engagements (and the pain she can try to afflict on others to keep Mnemon occupied), suggesting a latent kind of psychopathy.
Grip, one of the three young people whose latent abilities were awakened by the Roxy Theatre Incident thatvbn also empowered Mnemon. Like Chromakey, he's loyal to Montage. Grip's transformation gave him brick-style powers; he is incredibly tough and strong. The name Grip comes from his tactile telekinesis, wherein he can pick up just about anything to use as a weapon, without it breaking under its own weight; and has a persistent shielding layer around him. The incident, however, also heavily diminished his mental capabilities. Grip's identity has been confirmed as Wyatt Daniels, as Grip doesn't wear a mask of any sort. It is of note that while Montage hates Mnemon, any engagements with Grip have been somewhat amiable, suggesting that Mnemon's childhood friend is still in there somewhere, as he often seems to follow Montage's orders conveniently to the letter where it concerns fights with Mnemon. This kindness, however, he does not extend to others Montage orders attacked.
Soundboard, the most recent addition to Montage's retinue of super-powered minions, is one Alexandra Carmine, another Montana resident. In the wake of a battle between Mnemon and Montage's henchmen, Alexandra was an innocent bystander caught up in the collateral damage of Grip's reckless attacks against Mnemon. Seizing the opportunity for escape along with a free test subject, Montage stole away with her. Her success, in Montage's eyes, as a minion is in part attributed to being subject to extreme trauma experienced prior to Montage's experiments (witnessing Mnemon's battle with Grip and Chromakey didn't settle well with her). Soundboard has the ability to control sound and vibrations - in her own body, this allows her to phase through solid objects. Her sound manipulation gives her sonar senses, immaculate hearing, and the ability to produce deadly sonic blasts, or move in deathly silence.
Aviatrix, a superhuman from Baltimore with the power to communicate with and control birds, and possessing birdlike physiology (hollow bones, excellent vision) and a flair for broody prose in the form of Edgar Allen Poe. She can, not unlike Grizz Lee, cause one particular bird of her choosing at a time, to grow massive in size, and frightening in appearance. While she's not as dangerous as some villains get, Aviatrix has a special hatred for Mnemon because every time they fought, Mnemon's gotten the upper hand, but absolutely verbally roasted her, often causing her to become angry and lose focus. This has been problematic for Aviatrix, as most birds (except members of the corvid family, and other carrion birds) actually despise her manipulation of them, and will either flee or attack her if her control breaks. Aviatrix has been laying low, and followed Mnemon to Millennium City, and, covertly, has gotten a job with the Detroit City Zoo, patiently cultivating an army. It's come to recent light that Aviatrix also blames Mnemon for her condition, having discovered that her powers came from being bitten by Grizz Lee during a fight the mountain madman got into with Bill that spilled into the ski resort Avie was at.
Big Iron, a corrupted spirit taking the humanoid shape of locomotive wreckage and parts. Summoned ages ago as a curse upon the men who built the railroads on the backs of Chinese slave labor, Big Iron has since been tainted by the influence of the railway industry, and is often consumed with greed. While largely mindless, there is a spark in there that allows for some communication. However, Big Iron will always be tempted to turn to his main focus: greed and gluttony, in that he's endlessly hungry, and must continue to choke down combustible fuel, while seeking out the descendants of wealthy rail tycoons. While the creature never truly stays destroyed, or dormant if out of fuel, it thankfully seems confined to the state of Montana, even by rail.
The Prospector, a crazed old coot of grand stereotype: overalls, a pot for a hat, a wild beard, cross-eyed, and with more toes than teeth. This disheveled maniac was a conspiracy theorist and local nutjob before finding a hunk of 'ancient space gold' (an alien artifact) that gave him his twisted genius. Cooter Pyle's old-school, a villain with ridiculous flair, impossibly huge death-traps that are easy to escape from, zany schemes, and a lot of dynamite. While he's tied people to train tracks and been seen running off from bank robberies to 'fund his next big dig' carrying a sack with a dollar sign on it over his shoulder, he's never actually killed anyone. This doesn't mean that state authorities will show him leniency, but when often given the chance, it's much easier to let Prospector flee, as he tends to cause far less collateral damage when allowed to. Though many of his ill-planned ideas are simply long-winded practical jokes, he has been known to get very serious, like the time he built a musical device to mind control an entire town into constructing a mineshaft. His mercurial nature and being given enough time to build something are, if nothing else, antics he finds amusing to him. It's highly suspected that Cooter Pyle isn't actually a super-scientist of the mad variety, but someone able to give reality a hard nudge now and then.
Jezebelle, Mnemon's cousin. By day, Claire Lightfoot is the director of Tourism and Commerce for Missoula County, and also a liason for the Montana Mighty and any other corresponding heroes doing work in the area. While Claire has no powers, she is fiercely intelligent, resourceful, and ultimately, bored. The persona was cultivated out of a need to give the local heroes the occasional scheme to thwart, as she's cottoned onto the idea of heroes and villains being a great source of outside interest to the state's already long-flourishing tourism industry. As Jezebelle, she targets the corporate elite that hold business stakes in the state, a cat-burglar of sorts who dresses as a dame belle from the frontier days. While her getup and gear seems old-timey, her many gadgets and weapons are very modern in construction, and she always carries a plethora of tools for the job. While she's never used lethal force, she's never needed to. Mnemon knows Claire's true identity, and her particular brand of crime has long nagged at his conscience on what to do about her.
Grizz Lee, a mountain-man who also found a fragment of the same alien material that twisted the Prospector. Leon Pickett's neanderthal physical structure covers a cunning, not so much an intelligence. Dressed in animal skins and often smelling somewhat ripe of a fresh kill, this bushy bearded wildman often attacks encroaching industrial developments. While he has a neutral pact of sorts with Ranger Ron, and a soft spot for both Jezebelle (who has employed him as muscle in the past for some of her heists) and Maize (who takes advantage of any distraction she can get from him to throw a turnip at his teeth), he has no issue terrorizing anyone else in order to drive them off. Unfortunately, this also includes the protesters that gather at some of these places. Grizz by himself has unnatural strength, stamina, and a sense of smell; a love for building traditional hunting traps and implements and a superhuman talent with nets and bolas, and can climb, manveuver through treelimbs or swim as fast as he can run. But perhaps worst of all, is his ability to create a bond with a single animal. This gives him the various physical benefits of the animal, along with claws and fangs where applicable - but the animal, at his behest is the greater terror, transforming into a dire beast of its kin, and enlarging several times in size. Small woodland creatures and insects suddenly becoming forty foot kaiju is problematic enough to warrant a military response; though there is always the 'simple' solution of rendering Grizz unconscious to disrupt the effect (though more often than not, Grizz uses the animal as a distraction for escape and wanton destruction). The Montana Mighty have been called in on more than one occasion to deal with him finding something bigger than a squirrel, crow, or beetle and setting it loose on a highly populated lumber site.
Smiling Jack, a devil that plagues rural Montana. Hailing from the fallen angel variety of infernal hosts, Smiling Jack is a malevolent supernatural presence who preys on the desperate, but has a special fondness for the hypocritical within the fire and brimstone religious communities. Masquerading most often as a travelling faith healer of many means, he promises of the miracles of the Lord for the devoted who earn God's love. Most often, these promises come at the cost of hunting down other beneficiaries of his, whether they've welched on an agreement with him, or he's simply using a loophole to end a contract early. The people who truly accept him into his heart, after all, are sinners who deserve to be punished. His moniker comes from a perpetual grin - his inherent magics make him quite charming, but those who can pierce the Pride Devil's many veils will see the truth of a rictus, fanged grin, and skin barely stretched over bone. He and Mnemon have never directly crossed paths, but it's Smiling Jack's bargains that empowered Mnemon's own uncle in an attempt to have the shadowbender slain, as well as the source of the Red Lodge Boy's powers.
The Winter Warriors, a trio of former drug ring managers from a Hell's Angels chapter in the backwoods of Montana. They are:
- Black Diamond, a metahuman with cryokinetic talents. Once a disgraced olympic athelete, Cal Symons used his talents to help assist him in his career, only to be outed by Mnemon in his earlier years when Bill investigated the untimely accidents of several competitors in a qualifying race at the Blacktail Mountain ski resort. It was later revealed that Cal gained his powers when an avalanche occurred during a venture down a risky ski trail, trapping him in a cave where the presence of the mysterious meteoric substance known as Yellowstone transformed him, as it had many of Montana's other superhuman denizens. Cal rides a souped-up snowmobile, and has immense athletic talent, as well as a recklessness for taking great risks - he named himself Black Diamond after the ski trail danger rating (black diamond trails are the most dangerous ones to venture).
- Slalom, a speedster who gains incredible momentum, travelling faster and gaining more superhuman resilience the farther he goes. Slalom was turned into a metahuman by Doctor Montage during a period when Black Diamond and Montage teamed up to contend with Mnemon. Slalom was a former henchman in Black Diamond's gang, and went by the name David Wright. His transformation into a superhuman is not without cost, however - he remains secretly loyal to Montage, and his newfound powers are addicting to use. He's become a speed junkie in the literal sense, but has also developed a blatant psychotic streak that sometimes puts Black Diamond on edge.
- Mogul, the cousin of Tumbleweed and Sweetcorn, Terry Paycuma also drank from the same river that Sweetcorn and Tumbleweed did as teenagers, but his powers remained inert until young adulthood. He kept his talents a secret, preferring a 'quieter' life working for his father (a top ranking member of Montana's Hell's Angels chapter) living outside the law. When Mnemon broke up his father's gang and put Terry's dad in prison, Terry quietly sought out a method of getting his vengeance, and carrying on his father's work. Mogul has the ability to manipulate the weather in a small radius, but to devastating wintry effect. He can also create and control snow, and shape it into animate constructs that do his bidding, though they're extremely weak against heat.
The Red Lodge Gang: Grandma Caroline, Wrangler, Rustler, and Varmint, one third of the Red Lodge Boys. Randall Bannack and his two younger brothers (Russel and Jimmy) were little more than dishonest equipment thieves, pinching lease sites, miner's trucks, and all other manner of gear, with little cleverness between them to navigate getting caught on Mnemon's radar. They fared poorly, and Mnemon sent them to the slammer after giving them a sound thrashing. Sure to rot behind bars for a decade or more for their stack of felonies, they cursed the darkness-wielding wacko; but Grandmama Caroline had a plan for her boys. Knowing of Smiling Jack's legend (Caroline escaped a grisly fate in her youth, in which Smiling Jack made the adults attending his sermon tear each other apart for the privilege of being his favored disciple, and slowly harvesting energy from the trauma of the surviving children), she called upon him to strike a bargain. Arguing that the devil had long since taken his due from her for a bargain she never agreed to, an impressed Smiling Jack offered to strike a new accord. Jack offered Caroline the chance to join his cult and gain infernal knowledge that would better serve them both - she agreed, on the terms that her grandsons receive gifts that would let them escape from prison and get vengeance upon Mnemon.
- Grandma got her magic tricks, her youth, and a wedding to Smiling Jack. She schemes well, and has her grandsons out doing far better heists under her guidance. No longer a lady in her august years, Caroline's regressed to her thirties in appearance. Her magics are broad and varied, but she has a special knack for divinations, curses, and enchantments. She's also consistently guarded by a pair of Rottweilers (hellhounds in disguise) named Otis and Bo.
- Wrangler gained super strength, endurance, agility, immunity to most kinds of fire or heat, and an extra set of arms. Both pairs are covered in small eyes, as well as hooked spikes on the insides of the forearms and palms, and the arms can stretch out several yards. Wrangler's limbs, shoulders, neck and torso also conceal a myriad of mouths with metallic, sharklike teeth, making him dangerous in a grappling contest. He glistens constantly; this is due to a residue he constantly secretes that's adhesive (though he can't stick to himself as a defense mechanism, akin to spiders and their own webs).
- Rustler rides a horse made of hellfire, and carries several infernally enchanted tools including: a pair of six shooters that fire hellfire blasts, a lasso that causes suffering to those ensnared by it (akin to one's soul being tortured in the many layers of what lies below), and a bullwhip that unleashes a magical telepathic surge against whoever he cracks it at, causing them to become subservient if their will is weak. Rustler himself appears to resemble a constantly smoldering scarecrow, or some crude attempt at a wicker-man wrapped in poorly preserved skin. Unlike Wrangler, Rustler is resentful of his transformation. While not possessed of any great strength, cunning, or otherwise notable attributes, whenever Rustler is 'killed', he explodes in a gout of hellfire, reforming somewhere as yet unknown to anybody but himself, Grandma, and Smiling Jack.
- Varmint has control over, and the ability to shapeshift into, most kinds of small animals (including insects). Like Rustler, he appears to have no apparent superhuman attributes, appearing as the most normal of the brothers on the surface. It's what churns underneath that's troubling - an entire swarm of critters, waiting to explode out. His talent with his shapeshifting powers allows him to change exactly what swarm type is in play, on the fly; as well as mix and match, and even hybridize. Varmint is the most creative of the three with his powers, and the most irredeemable. When his swarm vacates his body, it leaves his skin behind. While that might seem like a weakness, the skin has a life of its' own, and an unusual resilience (woven from layers upon layers of infernally enhanced spider-silk).
General Perception
- Bill has long managed to avoid being present in the public eye as little more than rumor, or a trick of the light. His aura both ruins any media evidence of his involvement in anything, and makes people recollect events he's present for differently, as if he'd never been involved. With his presence rationalized away or credited to other nearby heroes, he enjoys a great deal of anonymity.
